Original Blessedness and Original Sin

 

I am disturbed by a Catholic sermon I listened to recently. The repeated theme was “you were born for love, but learned fear.” The audience was given to understand that God’s love for us is infinite and unconditional, and our existential problem was simply not understanding that Daddy, “Abba,” is always here ready to embrace us.

The clear message being that guilt, not sin, is the problem. Spoken like Martin Luther, who famously declared, “Love God, and sin boldly.” The speaker was a convert from Protestantism, and he may have brought Luther’s sola fides doctrine with him: salvation by faith alone.

He was preaching ”original blessedness” instead of original sin. In fact, his slogan seems to echo Rousseau’s in praising the natural man: “man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Rousseau’s philosophy was in direct and deliberate opposition to the Christian message. 

The doctrine of original blessedness faces an obvious problem: if each of us is born innately good, how did evil ever come into the world?

The speaker did address this problem. We learn fear from our parents. This is the “original sin.” Our parents are scary, presumably because they do not show unconditional love for us, and we project this lack of love on our image of God.

But this does not solve the problem: it’s turtles all the way down. How did Adam and Eve ever sin, then, since they had no parent to falsely teach them to fear, only God himself?

Adam and Eve feared God because they had sinned. And so this inclination to sin must also be in us. 

The speaker had skipped an essential step, like those Protestant churches that will not display a crucifix, but only an empty cross: they want the resurrection without the crucifixion. He made the original sin fearing God, which is to say, feeling guilt over having sinned.

Compare what the Bible says:

Proverbs 9:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

And Saint Paul:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

We are not born blessed, ready and able to love. We are born fallen, imagining like Eve that we are gods, and must learn to love. It is a hard and painful process; one that needs divine intervention.

And the first step is to learn to fear. 

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

My grandmother used to recite Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”

God treats us like a father, not a too-indulgent mother. He does not spoil his children.